By far the most exciting new feature in this release is Solution Manager, which is a new tool within Deployment Manager that (just as its name suggests) helps you deploy and manage SharePoint solutions packages (WSPs) in multi-tiered SharePoint 2010 environments.

Here is what you can do with Solutions Manager:

Inventory

View solutions installed across multiple farms from a single dashboard

Get list of farms/web applications where each solution is deployed

Governance/Baseline

Track deployment status and version history

Identify solutions that were not approved for deployment

Detect farms with old versions or unknown solutions

Solutions Management

Deploy, upgrade and retract solutions remotely

Execute immediately or schedule

Keep a historical trail of all operations

Note for existing users: Solutions Manager is a separate install that ships with Deployment Manager. However it is not included with your automatic web update, which upgrades your instance of Deployment Manager to 2.0. Existing customers will need to install it using its own installer from the Deployment Manager 2.0 release package that you can download here: https://www.quest.com/.

In addition to Solutions Manager, Deployment Manager 2.0 rolls up all the core application updates since the 1.0 release back in February.

We have also changed the way Deployment Manager installs in the new version. Unlike the original web installer which required an active Internet connection, Deployment Manager 2.0 comes with a full offline installer that can be installed on disconnected/isolated systems and only takes a couple of minutes to complete. You can check out the new documentation for specific instructions: https://www.quest.com/.

I've attached a "What's New" document to this blog post if you want to read more about Deployment Manager for SharePoint 2.0.